Royal Commission into bush fires must look at fire separation

One of the great surprises and disappointments to me about the recently announced Royal Commission, is that insurance has been completely left off the program.

The level of under and non-insurance that I have witnessed –and have written about– is heartbreaking to me, and this leaves so many families, business owners and communities in dire straits.

So why ignore the instrument that avoids this, takes pressure off the government, charitable institutions and not to mention the biggest funder of fire and emergency services in New South Wales.

It suggests that the industry has lost all relevance in the eyes of the government or that government do not want to hear some home truths from the industry. I am not sure which.

In any event, having been out at the coalface dealing with claims one thing is crystal clear. It is nothing new, and something that we have known for generations, that you need adequate fire separation between Australian native trees and homes and buildings.

Using the old adage that a picture paints a thousand words, I attach a photograph that I asked be taken of a strip of commercial buildings in Mallacoota Victoria. This is the entire industrial area of the town.

You will see that only one building was destroyed. As fate would have it, arguably the most commercially important when you consider the number of people in the community that rely on it, as a processing facility. It is also one of the countries biggest exporters of the seafood product that it processes.

In case it is not clear, I have marked the destroyed building with a red dashed rectangle. Right beside it, is a building that but for the fire in the destroyed building would have suffered no damage. The amazing thing for me was that the bit that I have marked with a red triangle is an awning made of shade cloth, which does not have one single burn mark.

The reason this one building caught fire is that there is a grove of Australian trees located right beside it. Note that but for these trees which the local authority refused to allow be taken away, there was ample fire separation with a large area of earthen hardstand behind the building.

The fire spread to the trees nearest to the now destroyed building from the bush to the right of the photograph, as the native trees let off a flammable gas which attracted the fire to them. Then, the burning leaves and twigs fell on to the leaf litter on the roof and in the gutters. The reason the roof looks more damaged in one area than closer to the trees, is due to the additional fire load in this area once the building caught fire. The featured image above, is a closer view of the fire damaged building.

We need to exercise some common sense and allow home and business owners to have a reasonable fire break between their homes and Australian native trees. If this basic risk mitigation strategy is not allowed, buildings in bush fire zones will become inevitably uninsurable.